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It’s obvious why good vocal technique is useful to singers but what many people don’t realize is that the use of good vocal technique can be helpful to many other professions, from public speakers to teachers to policeman. Basically any profession where people need to project their voice. While some of the suggestions I’m about to make may seem ridiculously obvious, they are often much harder to put into practice than they seem, as some of them are counter-intuitive to the way we ‘learn’ to speak. And even harder still is applying all of them at once. Alright, here goes.

Tip #1: Aim Low With Your Breath

Here is the obvious one I’m talking about. Of course you must breathe, but what most people do not know how to do is breathe into their diaphragm. Now, almost anyone who has been through grade school choir has heard that they should breathe with their diaphragm, but what does that mean and why should we do it?

In order to speak or sing without strain we need to release our breath evenly. As in nature and physics, objects always take the simplest path. Our diaphragms are one muscle. Releasing our breath using this one muscle is ultimately way simpler than using the hundreds of muscles in our chest and throat and back. So, this is why we do it. Now how do we accomplish this?

Everyone knows how to breathe into their diaphragm, we do it every night, but for some reason in our waking lives we ‘forget’ how to breathe this way. To activate your diaphragm lie down on your back. Unless you just ran three miles your stomach should naturally begin to rise and fall. This is breathing using your diaphragm. Now try to store that feeling in your mind and stand in front of a mirror. Take several deep breaths. If you’re like most people your chest will rise. This is not breathing into your diaphragm. Try again and watch to see that your chest remains completely out of the equation. I like to instruct people to imagine that their esophagus is a pole leading straight down to their belly. Let the air drop right past your chest and fill the ‘pot’ that is your belly. If this is still not working try bending over and put your hands on your knees. This should naturally disengage your chest muscles and allow your belly to ‘fill’ with air. This is “aiming low with your breath,” i.e. breathing into your diaphragm.

Tip #2: Relax Your Throat

Again, this seems like it’s obvious, but it’s stunning to me to watch and hear people speak with such unnecessary strain. All of that strain is muscles around the vocal chords literally fighting against their natural tendency to perform just fine. It’s almost like a metaphor for someone who is their worst enemy, who is actively fighting themselves. Relax your throat and your voice will come out just fine, it doesn’t need tension or tightness to project louder. I’ll explain how to project in a minute, but first, just relax your throat when you speak, you shouldn’t feel any tension or pain. Try saying the letter ‘O’. That openness that you must create in your throat to say the letter is a relaxed throat. Now, most other vowels and consonant sounds will feel like they are pulling you away from that openness but don’t let them induce you to strain. It is possible to create all of the sounds in the English language with a relaxed throat.

Tip #3: Project Using Your Natural Resonance

This one is easy to do but tricky to accomplish with a totally relaxed throat. Our heads have natural cavities particularly in our nasal passages that can serve as ‘amplifiers’ of sound. Indeed, it is the unique shape of our nasal passage that helps define the sound of our voice. So learning to project our voice in a totally relaxed manner is really just manipulating the use of our natural amplifier; the nasal passage.

Try saying the sound, “nee-ah” fast. Say it several times. You should feel a buzzing in your nose as repeat this. This is your voice resonating in your nasal cavity. Now, I understand that your voice may sound funny like this at first, kind of like someone doing a nerdy impression of you, but ultimately resonance is the safest way to project your voice. And sometimes you do it naturally without realizing it. Now, when someone lets out a blood curdling scream, granted, they are projecting their voice without resonance, but try screaming like that for 7 hours a day, it’s just not possible. They are accomplishing volume by stiffly holding the muscles around their vocal cords tight so that they can create as much pressure as possible, inducing them to vibrate hugely. But this violent ’slapping’ of your vocal cords together can eventually create tiny cuts in them which can heal into scars which can in turn have you sounding like Marge on the Simpsons. Sending your voice up through your nose and almost out of the top of your head is the safest way to gain volume because it does not depend on the muscles around your vocal cords at all.

I hope these tips to better vocal technique are helpful. As a part-time vocal coach and teacher I know that they work. In fact, there is no way to communicate with 7th grade boys without a little projection sometimes. Doing all three all of the time is not always possible and even someone who has studied voice for 10 years still gets it wrong, but I’m confident that if you strive to utilize even one of these suggestions you will have an easier time speaking for longer. And why not, you could practice all day, everyday! Good luck!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@next2friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com